893 Quotes by Henry James

Make (the reader) think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications. My values are positively all blanks, save so far as an excited horror, a promoted pity, a created expertness... proceed to read into them more or less fantastic figures.

I take up my own pen again - the pen of all my old unforgettable efforts and sacred struggles. To myself - today - I need say no more. Large and full and high the future still opens. It is now indeed that I may do the work of my life. And I will.

You think too much.''I suppose I do; but I can’t help it, my mind is so terribly active. When I give myself, I give myself. I pay the penalty in my headaches, my famous headaches--a perfect circlet of pain! But I carry it as a queen carries her crown.

If you have work to do, don't wait to feel like it; set to work and you will feel like it.

I don't need the aid of a clever man to teach me how to live. I can find it out for myself.

I don't want everyone to like me; I should think less of myself if some people did.

There's no more usual basis of union than mutual misunderstanding.

But she had after all a better reason for coming to Rome than that she cared for it so little. Her friend easily recognized it, and with it the worth of the other's fidelity. She had crossed the stormy ocean in midwinter because she had guessed that Isabel was sad.

Is there really no hope?" our young woman asked as she stood before her."None whatever. There never has been. It has not been a successful life.""No — it has only been a beautiful one.